You Can Always Count On Family (To Make You Feel Guilty)
by Caz Malfoy
Summary: Steve was the one who got shot, not Danny. So why he feel like he'd let the other man down?


**Title: **You Can Always Count On Family (To Make You Feel Guilty)  
><strong>Fandom: <strong>Hawaii Five-0 (2010)  
><strong>Rating: <strong>Teen  
><strong>Characters: <strong>Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams, Grace Williams  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Steve was the one who got shot, not Danny. So why did he feel like he'd let the other man down?  
><strong>Author's note: <strong>I wrote this in November 2013 to try clear up my writer's block, and it's been sitting on my hard drive ever since. So here you go; have some Vampire Steve and Danny on me.

I was never planning on leaving Steve's real name as Alex; it was just a filler. But, as is usually the case, now I can't think of something else and nothing works. Oh well.

x

The gunshot wound in Steve McGarrett's ached like hell and he couldn't suppress a wince at the pain that shot through him as he closed the door behind him.

The stitches would need to come out, that was a given. His body would never heal with them in there. It was just going to be a bitch to remove them.

He knew he should be in the hospital. The nurses, doctors and his colleagues had made it very clear he was a fool to discharge himself, but he couldn't stay there any longer.

Thankfully his SEAL background gave him enough of a cover story to pretend he was just being stubborn. He had been trained to withstand torture; something as trivial as a bullet wasn't going to stop him.

"You're bleeding."

Even though the voice was familiar, Steve hadn't been expecting to have company for the evening and couldn't help jumping in surprise. Only to let out a string of expletives when the action pulled on his stitches and sent a bolt of pain through his body.

Quickly he flicked on the light and glared at the figure sitting across the lounge. Danny was sitting in his favourite armchair, regarding Steve with a look that he'd come to decide was actually disappointment, mingled with fury.

"It's not like I meant to get shot," Steve muttered, closing and locking the door behind him. If Danny could do away with pleasantries, so could he.

Danny's eyes narrowed, but he stayed where he was, watching Steve head into the kitchen. When Steve returned, he shifted forward in his seat so he could regard the other man closer.

"What did you tell your team?" Danny asked. He didn't elaborate and Steve didn't need him to. He hated lying to people he trusted and who trusted him in response, but sometimes it was necessary and unavoidable.

Steve remained silent for a moment as he flipped the first aid kit open. "It's not as bad as it looks and I've had worse." Danny raised an eyebrow. "I have. Something like this is hardly fatal."

Danny sighed and helped the other man shrug out of his shirt. "It would be if you were human, Alexander," he whispered, his blue eyes landing on the bandaged wound on his stomach.

Alex sighed and glanced down at the wound. "How did you get here so quickly?" He purposely hadn't called Danny; the last thing he would want was to be on the receiving end of the disappointment he was currently experiencing.

"When I saw a news report that the leader of Five-0 had been critically wounded, I knew it was time to return home," Danny replied, shifting so he could remove the already blood stained bandage.

Alex remained silent, only hissing when the adhesive tugged on the fine hairs of his torso. Danny had been visiting friends in California for other a month and hadn't been planning to return for a while. If he had ordered his private plane to bring him back to Hawaii, the threat of exposure from Alex's wound must have been bigger than he realised.

"I don't think I exposed us," Alex whispered and damn Danny for making him feel like a little kid. He was almost two hundred years old for crying out loud.

Danny paused as he reached for the scissors to cut the stitches. "Exposed us?" He echoed. "Alexander, is that why you think I returned?"

The blond's accent had shifted. He no longer sounded like the American citizen they had been pretending to be for almost a century. Instead he sounded just like the British Citizen he had been born as over 500 years earlier.

Alex shrugged his shoulders, unable to keep the petulant look from his face.

Danny sighed and curled his fingers around the scissors for a moment before releasing his grip. "I was worried about you, you big goof," he chided, his tone not dis-similar to that of a parent assuring his child they were still loved after doing something stupid. "I don't care about the exposure. We've been exposed plenty of times in the past; we'd be able to figure it out again. I was worried I was going to lose you."

He paused and chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I know you're a big boy and vampires are notoriously hard to kill, but that doesn't make it easier when you do something stupid. You wouldn't understand because you've never sired someone but the parental connection doesn't disappear with age, you know?"

Alex plastered a mock affronted look on his face. "Great. That means I'm stuck with you treating me like a little kid for the rest of time," he grumbled, although they both knew he didn't mean the words. Danny had been the only father figure he had ever known

Danny rolled his eyes. "Someone has to keep you in line," he retorted, getting to his feet so he was towering over Alex for a change. "Lie down, let me see what you did to yourself," he instructed.

The younger man huffed, but still did as he was instructed and moved so he was lying on his back across the couch. "Like I said, it's not like I meant to get shot. I didn't have a choice; it was either me or Chin, and I couldn't let him die because I wasn't paying attention."

Danny shook his head, but didn't respond as he carefully cut the stitches the ER nurse had carefully fastened earlier. Alex hissed when the scissors grazed the already healing wound, but otherwise managed to not complain as Danny attended to him.

"I know you care for your team, Alexander," the blond finally spoke, setting the scissors to the side and placing the ruined stitches in a small plastic bag. They would need to be destroyed soon, before anyone realised they weren't in the man they knew as 'Steve' and decided to go looking for evidence that something wasn't quite right. "But you know the risks of being close to humans."

It wasn't the first time they had discussed what it felt like to lose someone they were so close to. Danny wasn't the only one who knew what it felt like. In his two hundred years, Alex had buried many lovers and friends, so he wasn't immune to the feeling of pain loss caused.

With a groan, he pushed himself into an upright position. Before he could stand, Danny placed a hand on his shoulder and he looked up into the other man's blue eyes. "I don't like seeing you hurt," Danny whispered, getting to the core of what had put him in such a foul mood earlier.

Alex smiled in response, this one real and full of genuine affection, and got to his feet. "I know you don't," he replied, an Australian lilt starting to appear in his voice. His accent had started to change as well; it always did whenever he was around Danny for longer than a few minutes. He generally didn't fight it unless they were in public. "But, isn't it better to enjoy the time we have with people, than push everyone away?"

He smirked when Danny reached out to swat him on the shoulder. "You sound like Rachel," he muttered. He looked down at his watch. "You need to feed."

Alex scowled and was about to shake his head when he realised that his fangs had started to grow at the mere mention of food. He hadn't anything to drink for more than twenty-four hours. Most vampires could go without blood for almost three days, before they started to lose their sane minds (providing they had one in the first place), but Alex was wounded. His body desperately needed blood to repair the damage the bullet had caused; the IV at the hospital just hadn't been cut out for the job.

"I can't exactly rock up to a vampire club in Honolulu, Danny," he reminded his sire.

Danny frowned. "No vampire is going to give up the identity of another."

Alex rolled his eyes. "That's not what I'm talking about. You know those places are almost always swamped with humans trying to convince people that they're willing to be the next victim. All I need is for one of those to make me, and the whole island will know what I really am come morning."

The other man was silent for a moment, before he fished a set of keys from his pocket. It was a testament to how exhausted he was that Alex hadn't even noticed the Camaro parked in his driveway.

"We'll head on up to the North Shore," Danny decided. "People are less likely to recognise you up there."

He paused for a beat and Alex opened his mouth. Before he could say the words that were in his mind, Danny added, "And I don't care. This time you're not driving _my _car."

x

_Prisoner 50, or Alex as he preferred to be called, sat curled up on his bunk, shivering from the cold. But he barely noticed. They had been at sea for over a week now – he had counted the sunrises in an attempt to stay sane – and he hadn't been warm since they had left England._

_He had spent the first two days of the journey feeling sorry for himself and trying to work out how he had managed to get in his current situation._

_Then he had decided to suck it up and deal with the hand he had been dealt. Alex had been smuggling contraband – mostly food and art – in and out of the country for years. He had always known there was a risk of deportation should he get caught._

_And he was positive that he wouldn't have been if he hadn't let himself get distracted. The king's sister could be very convincing when she wanted to._

_Of course, during his momentary lapse of concentration, he had messed up and it hadn't been long before he'd found himself in shackles. _

_The judge had looked extremely happy to report that Alex would be boarded onto the next ship bound for Australia, and he was to remain in the dank cell until then._

_Alex snapped out of his daze when he heard a guard shout, "50!" He pronounced it _Five-0. "_You're to report to the deck for your chores."_

_Normally there would have been a sarcastic response on the tip of his tongue, but the last time Alex had let his mouth run away from him, he had ended up being lashed fifty times in front of the whole crew. That had been the day before; his back couldn't cope with the strain of more beatings so soon._

_His chores, he was informed of, was to take meals to the high profile prisoners. Providing they were still alive, of course. For the entire time they had been at sea, no-one had thought to visit those on the ship for multiple murders and high treason._

_Even those in the lower decks were fed more often than those. Not that Alex was sure what he was given every other day could constitute a meal, but at least it was _something.

_He didn't know what he had been expecting when he came face to face with hardened criminals, but Alex had been pleasantly surprised when he'd discovered that those people were just like he was, and actually quite pleasant. Even going so far as to thank him, before they shoved their faces into their food._

_The last prisoner, however, was completely different. Huddled in the corner of his cell, in much the same manner Alex had been, he didn't even lift his head, blond hair dirty and limp with sweat, as the door opened._

_Silently, Alex placed the food on the floor at the man's feet, and frowned when even that didn't get a response._

_Gently, he nudged the man with his foot. "You better eat your food, before you starve to death."_

_That was when a thought occurred to Alex. What if the man was already dead? That would explain why he hadn't moved when all the others had pounced on the food like vultures._

"_Go away." The voice was strangled and barely sounded human. Alex swallowed thickly and pushed that thought to the side. Of course it was _human. _What else could it be?_

_Not wanting to spend longer with this stranger, even if he had no idea why, Alex shrugged his shoulders and turned on his heel._

_He didn't even make it to the cell door, before he felt the presence of a body pressed against his own, seconds before pain flared up his neck._

_For his part, he tried to fight, but his attacker was stronger and it wasn't long before the pain overwhelmed him and he couldn't fight the darkness anymore._

x

Alex woke with a start and a cold sweat on his chest. It had been a long time since he had dreamt about the day he'd been turned into a vampire.

Danny had been on the ship bound for the colonies after being tried and convicted for the murder of one the King's officials. When Alex had asked, Danny had never denied committing the crimes nor had he ever outright confessed.

They had decided to make an example out of Danny, and rather than execute him, he had been bundled onto the next ship leaving the country.

Of course, they could never have known that Daniel Williams was a vampire and leaving him to starve in a cell where anyone could stumble on him.

Prisoner 50 had been the first to come face to face with the blood-starved vampire and he had ultimately paid the price. Overwhelmed with guilt for attacking him, Danny had forced his blood into the other man's system, thus ending his life, but giving him an entirely different existence.

Alex heard the floorboards in the corridor creak and he turned his head to watch the door. The handle nudged down slowly and the door opened a crack. He grinned when he saw a large brown eye peak through, too low to be Danny.

"Ally!" Grace cried, giving up the pretence of sneaking around and throwing the door wide open.

She bounded into the room and almost jumped on the bed, before a look of realisation crossed her face. Clearly Danny had told her that Alex had been injured.

Alex shifted, pushing himself up so he was leaning against the headboard. He was feeling a lot better than he had the night before, and the gunshot wound had completely healed after he and Danny had fed on the North Shore.

"It's okay," he assured her, patting the bed next to him. "I'm a bit sweaty, though," he warned.

Grace grinned and climbed onto the bed, curling into his side regardless of the fact that he needed a shower. "Danno said you were hurt," she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.

Alex sighed and wrapped an arm around her. "You know Danno is a worrier, Gracie," he replied, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I'm all healed now. See?" He pointed to the skin of his torso where the only evidence of his injury was a faint pink scar that would disappear within weeks.

"Why did the bad man hurt you, Uncle Ally?" she asked, biting her lip in fear.

"They were trying to hurt a friend of mine," Alex answered honestly. "Hey," he murmured when he saw how much she looked like she was going to cry. "You know neither me nor Danno can be hurt by a gun."

Grace nodded her head, but didn't look like she believed him. Silently, Alex pulled her tighter against his chest and held her there. He knew from experience there wasn't anything he could say that would convince her everything would be okay.

As far as anyone knew, Grace was Danny's daughter from his marriage with Rachel. What they didn't know was that Rachel was actually a direct descendant from when he had been human. When they had returned to Britain from Australia after almost a century, he had discovered kin and had been watching over them ever since.

Danny and Alex had helped Rachel move to Hawaii when her abusive husband, and Grace's father, had been arrested back in England. If he had died in prison after a visit from the pair of them, it was nothing more than a coincidence.

Grace had discovered the truth about them being vampires purely by accident, and after learning his real name had taken to calling him 'Ally'; something he really didn't like, but there was no way he was ever going to tell her to stop. She had both Alex and Danny wrapped around her little finger and she knew it.

"Do you think we can convince Danno to let us go swimming?" Alex asked, trying to draw Grace back into conversation so she would stop worrying.

Grace's eyes lit up and she turned to the doorway where Danny was standing. How she noticed him and Alex didn't, the SEAL had no idea. "Can we Danno?" she begged, her eyes widening in a way they had never been able to resist.

Danny laughed and rolled his eyes. "If Alexander is feeling up to it, I don't see any reason why not," he conceded. Large brown eyes turned to Alex and he chuckled, nodding his head. "Why don't you go get changed, Gracie?" Danny suggested, holding a hand out to pull her from the bed.

The young girl pressed a kiss to Alex's cheek, before darting from the room, heading down the corridor to the guest room.

"If you're not feeling up to swimming, say so now," Danny instructed, folding his arms across his chest as he stared at his childe. "Grace will understand."

Alex knew he meant well; all Danny had ever cared about was making sure his family was okay, and Alex had been part of that family since the fateful day on board the ship. That was the only reason he didn't roll his eyes or get annoyed at the constant badgering. It was nice to have someone mother-henning him occasionally. Not that he was willing to put up with it all the time.

"I fed enough last night. The sun shouldn't affect me too much," Alex assured him, throwing the covers back and climbing off the bed.

Danny smiled thinly and placed a hand on Alex's arm. "Make sure you don't overdo it, okay?" he whispered, looking into the taller man's hazel eyes.

A smirk tugged at the corner of Alex's mouth. "Yes, dad," he replied dutifully, ducking into the bathroom before Danny could hit him.

When he emerged from the bedroom a short while later – after throwing his three-minute-navy-shower rule to the wind – wearing board shots, neither Grace nor Danny could be found.

Heading through the house to the lani, he grinned when he saw Danny sitting on one of the wooden chairs, watching as Grace constructed what had to be one of the most complicated sandcastles in the world.

Sensing his childe behind him, Danny reached out and nudged Grace's shoulder. Alex could hear every word they said – thanks to the enhanced senses that came along with his vampirism – but he didn't need to. It was obvious from the way Grace's face lit up and she came running at him, that Danny had alerted her to his presence.

"Uncle Ally, can we go swimming yet?" she begged, looking up at him with big brown eyes he could never refuse.

Alex grinned and twisted one of her braids around. "Go get your feet wet," he instructed. "I need to ask Danno something."

A frown appeared on Grace's face and he could tell she wanted to know what his question was, but she quickly decided against it, nodding her head and running back down the garden, to the private stretch of beach that had drawn Alex to the house in the first place when he had first arrived in Hawaii.

"Are you sure you're not up for a swim?" Alex asked, dropping his towel beside Danny.

The look he received in response made him chuckle. It had been a running joke between the two of them how much Danny detested the ocean. His excuse was that he had been brought up in the English Countryside and going to the beach had been something only the gentry had been able to afford.

Privately Alex was pretty certain he was just afraid.

"Just keep your eye on her, Alexander," he muttered through clenched teeth, his eyes straying to where Grace was happily splashing about. Occasionally she would look up impatiently, but her gaze would never linger on them for longer than a second before she looked away.

Chuckling to himself, Alex jogged away down the beach, coming to a stop where the ocean met the sand. "Are you sure you need to come with you, Gracie?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips and looking at her with a grin. "You look like you're having fun without me."

Despite the fact that Alex played the same trick on her every time she came over, an alarmed look appeared on Grace's face. "No!" she exclaimed, throwing herself out of the water at Alex. "I was waiting for you!" she added, her lips forming a pout.

Back on the beach, Danny watched them play with an affectionate smile on his face. They generally tried to not talk about it, but he remembered the day he had made a mistake and lashed out at the first human who crossed his path on-board that ship.

He had been a vampire for almost two hundred years at that point, not being able to control himself was a mistake only new-borns made. And Alexander had paid the price of his stupidity.

Danny knew that he would never have been able to live with himself if he had let an innocent man die, so he had force-fed Alexander as much blood as he had been able to. The rest of eternity as a vampire was better than dying for no reason on a stinking boat heading for Australia.

At least that's what he had tried to tell himself at the time. He had been alone for so long, almost 140 years since his sire had been killed during the Great Fire of London. It had only been when they were half-way to Australia that he finally admitted that maybe now he had a childe he wouldn't be so alone.

"Danno!" Grace's voice shouted from the sea, snapping him out of his daze.

He looked up to see Grace standing, her feet level with the waterline. If he looked close enough, Danny could see Alexander's hair sticking out of the water, but apart from that he was completely submerged.

He rolled his eyes, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Trust the other man to use his skill of not needing to breath to amuse Grace.

"I'm walking on water!" Grace managed to declare, seconds before Alexander decided he apparently had enough and flung the young girl into the water no more than three feet away.

Despite the fact that his insides were clenching when Grace took longer than a millisecond to reappear, Danny couldn't help but laugh at the expression on Alexander's face when he emerged from the water.

He looked so happy, Danny thought, watching as Alexander swam after Grace and pulled her close to him as she got her breath back.

Ever since John McGarrett had been killed, seeing a smile on Alexander's face was a rare thing. He had been close to the HPD officer; closer than Danny would have liked, but when McGarret had accepted Alex into his family with no questions asked and allowed him use of the McGarrett name, John had moved up in Danny's eyes.

"You look like you're miles away," Alexander's voice said, this time much closer than Grace's had been.

Danny looked up to see his childe standing over him, towel drying his chest, before his eyes flickered back to the ocean.

"Relax," Alex instructed, rolling his eyes and dropping into the chair next to Danny. "She's finishing her sandcastle. There's nothing scary that can get her, I promise."

Danny's eyes narrowed, but there was no malice in his glare. "How come you're not still in the water?" he asked. Normally it took nothing short of a small miracle for the both of them to leave the ocean.

Alex screwed up in his nose childishly. "Grace was getting wrinkly," he grumbled, making Danny laugh at the petulance in his tone. They were silent for a moment, before Alex softly asked, "What were you thinking about?"

Danny considered telling him. There were very few secrets between them. But he decided against it; his being melancholy would benefit no-one.

"Nothing," he whispered, reaching down and plucking a bottle of beer from the cooler at his side. "Just wondering where we can take Gracie for lunch this afternoon."

It would have been obvious even to someone who didn't know him that Danny was lying, but Alex knew better than to call him on it. Instead, he accepted the drink and leant back against the chair, his eyes wandering back to Grace as they weighed up the options of Kamekona's or Chilli's.

The End


End file.
